OOC Satore Stillwater

In the case of my story from last night, it was new- I wrote it in Word- carried it to Tumblr for gifs, copied it to Char Diary to try out the cross post feature instead of posting to Tumblr first. (Has Kharris’ voice in the back of my head whispering in the wind.)

I’ll be honest, I was going to ask about this- because when I did cross post from here first- it became difficult to edit on Tumblr side (I’m bad with code format stuff), and lost its “keep reading” that would normally keep my blog from overwhelming the front page. :(

Normally, my process is write it to Tumblr, then copy here so that I can clean up the Tumblr post if necessary. Hope this helps!

Thank you for responding Elandriah, 

I have a few questions...

- "carried it to Tumblr for gifs" - so you make a draft in Tumblr and then add the gifs?

- I assume the screenshot is from your Tumblr crossposting experence not working out?

(I need to add an "edit comment" option so badly.. It sucks that I can't edit my comments to fix errors..)

Yes and yes. Sorry my brain is still waking up, and heading to work after 5 days off sick >.<

I typically use the Tumblr gif feature on the site because it’s searchable and I don’t need to save particular gifs to my PC.

That is a screenshot of the edit screen thats on Tumblr’s mobile app. I can get a screenshot of the pc fields when I get home this evening if that helps.

The crosspost is lovely, and carried all the formatting without issue, I just can’t edit it.

For my stories (Braghaman and Marachius), all the stories that I’ve posted here are new things that I’ve written recently. Most of the time, I write my things as a text doc and once I’m okay with it, I’ll copy/paste into Tumblr. I’ll then copy it to here and, depending on when I last posted something, I may save it as a draft for a while so that I’m not flooding the front page with my stuff. 

I will check why things can't be edited in the tumblr app on my own. Thanks for the pointer.

@Braghaman, looks like you're all crossposting by copy and pasting and the crossposting feature is not doing it's job well enough.

What I did not quite understand is - do you keep things as drafts on CD or on Tumblr (or both)?

Both, but for different reasons.  Drafts on Tumblr are usually very rough ideas that I wanted to keep with the character. Then later, I’ll write out something, sometimes directly in Tumblr and sometimes on a text doc depending on how much time I have to write. A lot of the time, I only have a little time to add something or edit it, so those I tend to save as a document. If I know I’m sitting at the computer for a while, I’ll write and edit directly in Tumblr. 

When I save a draft here, it’s something that I’ve already written and posted, but I don’t want to post it here yet because I’ve already posted a thing or two so I’m trying to put some more time in between my posts and not clutter up the feed with my writing. That’s the main reason that I hadn’t used the cross posting feature; sometimes I’ll write a bunch of short things in quick succession and I don’t want to flood here. 

Interesting!

So why are you afraid of flooding it here?

And why do you edit things on Tumblr? I don't see you using any gif-s so that's not your reason. How is Tumblr editing better than Word or CharDiary?

With regards to flooding, I'm just trying to be considerate. My style/character/etc. may not be everyone's cup of tea, so I just try to keep that in mind and pace myself.

As for editing, it really depends on how long the story is going to be (at least what my initial thoughts are about its length). If its something that I suspect will be longer-ish, I'll usually write it up in a doc that is saved to my dropbox. I do that in part because usually I write longer things in stages, and I may not always be on the same machine each time as I move between desktops, laptops, and mobiles. I also tend to type up the longer things this way because a couple of years back I was writing something rather long on Tumblr, and then the site burped and I lost everything. So now I am a little bit paranoid about that. And you're right, I don't use images a lot in my writing (though I should probably try more often). Mostly I'm just proof-reading when I edit because I know that many times I'll write something that makes perfect sense to me since I can picture it all in my head, but then I realize that its not as clear to anyone else. Or of course there's the fact that I can sometimes spell like someone put a typewriting and a bunch of rocks into a dryer.

As for editing preferences, I don't think Tumblr is better than CharDiary. This site is great for having tools to write and post. For me, its like I said earlier. I tend to post them on Tumblr first since I assume that if people get annoyed with a rapid fire of several postings they can ignore it or stop following me if it gets too bad for them. Then I copy here as a draft and wait a bit to let others have their turns.

 - Dropbox (paper) is indeed great. I loved it when I saw it. 

 - Laughed on the dryer spelling joke :))

Thanks!

For me, a LOT of it is habit. I have been writing and posting on Tumblr for years and years now. Basically since the old Haven site died! That said, I have a particular way I tend to like my Tumblr posts to look on people's dashes- read more cutoff if it is very long, sometimes using pictures or gifs, etc. It just seems easier for me to write, do my tumblr post and then toss it in here. :3 

I think a lot of it is still habit for most Tumblr users.

The "Read More" feature is really nice.  RP Haven used to have one, too, and it was well loved. Like on Tumblr, you could make a "Read More" wherever you liked and the formatting was kept above it. Keeping post formatting is very visually appealing for me.

On CharDiary, the "read more" is automatically placed always (it would automatically place on RP Haven after something like 1000 characters). So for users posting long things, having one you could use between here and Tumblr might be nice. (That sounds terrifically complex to me though, but I'm no programmer).

Do people know if you post the text from CharDiary and then put gifs in on Tumblr that it will update on CharDiary as well? For example: write a text only or text and pictures you have inserted direct, cross post it to tumblr, then go into tumblr and add in the gifs, then gifs end up on the CharDiary site, too. (If I remember correctly)

I was wrong about the last bit, there! Sorry!

Thank you for the "Read More" clarifications Kharris. Is is manual on Tumblr? I mean you click a button and you add a "read more" in the middle of the post text? Or you put the intro in one box and the full thing in another?

I think placing the read more automatically is a better approach because other ways users will need to learn where the "read more" functionality is and learn how to use it which sucks.

I will see what I can do to make it  keep the formatting in the "shortened" version of the posts on feeds.

About the "cross posting" well it works only one-way. If you post on CD it will be posted to TR. However if you edit on TR it won't appear on CD. For now it can only push new posts (and their changes) to TR.

The first batch I posted had already been on Tumblr for a little while and I copied them here so I wouldn't be starting Regynn part of the way into her story. For my newer posts, I write in Google Docs so I can access it from any device. If I'm posting at work I won't be able to open Char Diary or Tumblr because they're blocked so I have to use my phone. I haven't tried posting here on my phone yet but I've done it Tumblr a bunch of times so I'm comfortable with it. I haven't tried your cross posting feature yet but I'd really like to.

Thank you, Reg! 

Thanksto your and others' answers I am getting a clearer picture of what's needed.

I've been posting on tumblr for forever and recently swapped to here. I prefer to post to my character journal rather than my personal (silly) one, but for some reason it was only allowing me to post to default when I wanted to crosspost. Is there a way to change that that I'm maybe missing?

Go to your character -> settings -> Set Character's Tumbr Blogs (right hand side) 

OR

Go to http://chardiary.com/tumblr/setBlogs

You can choose a Tumblr blog to post to for each of your characters on CD.

Hope that helps. Do ask if it needs more clarification. I can make a short vid or something :)

Thank you, that helped immensely!

You are welcome!